Today I’m going to get some stuff off my chest — not to mention my desk.

Call this a hodgepodge, a buffet, a headline writer’s nightmare or even a mess if you’d like. But here goes in the order in which this stuff spilled out of my brain.

*

Is Manhattan really rolling in this much dough?

According to the latest figures from the US Labor Department, the average weekly wage in Manhattan rose 9 percent from June 2009 to June 2010.

Nine percent! I asked the department to dig deeper into the numbers for me, but it said most of the information was privileged.

This much I could find out. Not surprisingly, the improvement was mostly coming from Wall Street, where average weekly wages for investment bankers rose to $4,650 in the April through June period of 2010 from “just” $4,155 a year earlier.

This’ll make you wish you were one of them.

In the first quarter of 2010 — when bonuses are handed out as well as hefty severance packages for the not-so-lucky — the average weekly pay rose to $13,743 from $11,125 in the same period of ’09.

That’s weekly pay!

And don’t weep for securities brokers. According to the Labor Department, they earned an average weekly wage of $7,474 in the second quarter of 2010, compared with “just” $4,220 the year before.

But bonus time wasn’t as good for brokers, whose average salary “plummeted” — poor them! — to only $15,194 in the first quarter of ’10 from $16,322 bonus-enriched the year before.

Using an average figure is, of course, nonsense because one person who is earning a $1 billion paycheck could throw off all the calculations. (Don’t look at me.)

But the department couldn’t tell me whether that’s what happened. And it also couldn’t tell me how much the mean number — half the workers above and half below a certain salary — had changed. How’d other Manhattanites do?

Up 4.1 percent over the year — probably because the big spenders on Wall Street are tipping better, getting their shoes shined more often or maybe dropping twenties from their billfolds.

*

Has the stock market weathered the storm of rising oil prices, increasing inflation, budget deficits, possible government shutdowns, bankrupt foreign countries and many other woes?

Stocks went up the past few days because professional money managers always push prices higher at the end of the month. And today is the first day of March. The market’s record on Day 1 of any month, as my readers know, is outstanding.

The world’s troubles, meanwhile, continue although you couldn’t tell by the way Wall Street is behaving.

*

This is from one of my readers in Manhattan:

“I am a gasoline retailer in Manhattan and look forward to your articles in The Post. I especially like your position on the gasoline ‘SPECULATORS.’ ”

“They truly have driven gas prices $1 per gallon above where they should be.

“My customers are constantly asking me when will the price hikes stop? My response is: drive down about a mile and a half to Wall Street and ask the greedy little f**** when they will have made enough money at your expense.

“If Washington would call me I would tell them how to stop this madness. You want to trade gasoline, (then) take delivery and pay cash. Even Goldman Sachs, with all its money couldn’t afford to purchase millions of barrels of gas per day, let alone take delivery. On which floor would you like us to pile it up?”

“John, please keep attacking Wall Street. Maybe one day our president and the James Gang on Capitol Hill will awaken from years of slumber and protect the people who put them there. K.K.

Dear K.K.,

OK, but please watch your language. Let’s keep the crude in barrels, where it belongs.

*

Goldman Sachs has been trying desperately to get the price of oil higher for years. And why not? The company invests in the stuff, so it makes money when the price rises. And its employees have no trouble paying at the pump.

Last week Goldman — and, to be fair, other Wall Street firms — were at it again with predictions of huge increases in the price of oil and gasoline.

And it sounded a lot like the prediction of Arjun Murti, the energy analyst at Goldman who in May, 2008 said the price of oil would go to $200 a barrel.

It didn’t.

In fact, it didn’t come even close since demand for energy has been weak because the worldwide economy has been off its game for the past 2 ½ years.

In fact, Murti and the crowd of oil boosters lucked out when oil stayed in the $70/$80 a barrel range solely because speculators and energy traders were able to keep it there through sheer force of will.